Supermarket responds after Reddit user’s warning about self-checkout overcharge — ‘Was annoyed that the total amount due on my supermarket purchase did not equate to the individual items I purchased.’::‘Was annoyed that the amount due on my Woolies purchase did not equate to the individual items I purchased.’
Most likely an oversight.
The real question would be how did the clerk/store handle it when pointed out?
I’ve never once had a grocery store quibble over a discrepancy - they’ve always just overrode the price, right then, and went on with their day. At most taking a minute.
Compare that to before there were barcodes, and just price stickers on things (yes, I’m that old). This was a LOT more hassle.
Ever see a sitcom where the clerk is calling for a price check over the intercom? Yep, that’s what they used to do. Most of the time we’d tell them nevermind, don’t bother, because it took too damn long and there was a line of 3+ filled, large carts behind us…because checkout took forever as the clerk rang in, manually, every item. Pulled out their sheets to verify prices, code, etc.
Can’t be just an oversight. This has to be an intentional design decision. The “simple” (and economical) way to build this system is to build it so that the scan reads the price from a database and that price is then displayed and used to sum the total.
Keeping two prices, a display and a real one, is a design decision that adds a complexity to the system, makes it more difficult to administer and is an intentional design decision, especially if the numbers are allowed to differ.
A coupon not being applied correctly could be a mistake with that coupon. A sale not being taken into account, a problem with that sale or that UPC entry in the database. Those could be issues with data entry and data management.
This is different. This is intentional. And I’d bet, we’ve just found someone either cheating the tax man or embezzling funds.